Friday, June 3, 2011

By KASIE HUNT | 6/3/11 9:14 AM EDT
SEABROOK, N.H. — Sarah Palin’s bus is plastered with a mock-up of the U.S. Constitution. But her entourage — both the three-vehicle motorcade that includes the bus and the smaller, two-SUV version she uses for smaller events — hasn’t been very respectful of traffic laws.

Snip

Journalists in the caravan trailing her “One Nation” tour bus describe the experience as harrowing, a rolling menace careening up the East Coast in hot pursuit of the former Alaska governor who declined to provide any advance itinerary of her tour over six days on the road.

As they left the clambake she attended Thursday in New Hampshire, Palin’s two-SUV caravan traveled at 52 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone as it peeled away from the hosts’ neighborhood. Both cars blew through a stop sign about a mile later. They did 70 mph in a 55 mph zone on I-95 — and then, after they got off, without signaling, flew right past a flashing sign informing them they were going 45 mph in a 35 mph zone.

1. Quit whining. There are probably a million folks who would gladly take these terrible risks for the money you make! So shut up already. Climb out of the Obama Tank and start being a REPORTER!

2. Besides, they were just trying to make it to all those 57 states Obamie visited.

I mean, can the media’s hatred of Palin be made any plainer??

Oh well.

The garden is doing fine, thank you. The onions are delicious and the peppers are close to being big enough to be picked. I hoed it out today and put mulch around the tomatoes. I have suckered them and put up the metal cages I use instead of sticks and they are loaded with blooms. The Crook Neck and Patty Pan squash looks great and the candy, aka Okra, has finally caught on and is growing so fast you can almost see it shoot up.

Summer time and the living is easy….. Whoever wrote that never had a garden and a big yard.

Took time out today from cutting up downed trees and gardening and such to go pick up my wife’s Buick Regal from the repair shop at our local GM dealer. The car had started quitting and then restarting and dying when stopped at red lights and I took it in yesterday.

The problem, according to the Service Manager, was that the Mass Airflow Sensor had gone bad and was turning of the air to the cylinders from time to time. After market sensor $253.22, cleaning throttle body and other labor $197.18, one gasket $8.82 and $45.74 tax and the total was $514.82.

Yeah. Wow. Ouch.

Now, no complaint. The Regal has performed royally and its supercharged 3800 cc V6 can outrun a jack rabbit being pursued by a rattler. And no complaint about the mechanics. I’ve used’em for years and found them to be honest, trustworthy and helpful.

Sad to say mine didn't look this good. But it got me where I needed to be.

Yeah. $50.00. Wow. Kept it for about three years. It had a nasty habit of chewing up clutch throw out bearings. I think the part cost about $4.00 and the labor was free since I was the mechanic. I got so good I could fix it in the dark, or at least with minimal lighting….

I remember the axle inner race bearing driver side went and started allowing grease to get on the brake lining. That provided a rather interesting stopping paradigm. …… Tap brake, correct pull to the right…tap brake, correct pull to the right, etc., etc…… and yeah lady, I almost hit you but I didn’t so quit giving me that look.

A buddy and I fixed it in the back yard of the house the wife and I had rented. It was cold and she kept us supplied with coffee. We didn’t have a blow torch to heat the bearing but we did have a (at least) a 5000 watt soldiering iron that did the job of heating the bad bearing so we could get it off.

Being married, short of cash and needing transportation can lead to perspiration followed by inspiration.

It could find its way to the squadron’s hangout almost without steering and after those cold nasty nights when we had Sea Air Rescue (SAR) duty it could produce warm air from the heater by the time I arrived home.

We’d pre-flight our aircraft and bunk down in a Quonset hut left over from WWII. Fully clothed with all our logs and maps and other necessary stuff we would play endless games of pinochle. We even had our very own pick up truck poised and ready to rush us to our plane.

Doctor Strangelove had nothing on us!

Along about 2200 we’d get horsecock sandwiches and coffee. They would be any cold cut of meat, with mustard on white. And assuming we didn’t take off to save some hapless person’s behind we’d often have a patrol take off around 6AM and some other crew would become SAR while we looked for Soviet subs and played other games.

But that’s another story.

And unlike Kasie, we never whined and made barely enough to feed ourselves.

Of course a few of us died. And I am damn resentful about that. Good men dead and in their graves…. Just so people like Kasie could grow up and write the nonsense that she does.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.” - William Pitt

"Logic. There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense." - Victor Davis Hanson